Leading Geneticist: Human Intelligence is slowly declining

Mike Barrett from Natural Society reports, “Would you be surprised to hear that the human race is slowly becoming dumber, and dumber? Despite our advancements over the last tens or even hundreds of years, some ‘experts’ believe that humans are losing cognitive capabilities and becoming more emotionally unstable. One Stanford University researcher and geneticist, Dr. Gerald Crabtree, believes that our intellectual decline as a race has much to do with adverse genetic mutations. But human intelligence is suffering for other reasons as well.”

“According to Crabtree, our cognitive and emotional capabilities are fueled and determined by the combined effort of thousands of genes. If a mutation occurred in any of of these genes, which is quite likely, then intelligence or emotional stability can be negatively impacted … Darwin’s theory of ‘survival of the fittest’ is less applicable in today’s society, therefore those with better genes will not necessarily dominate in society as they would have in the past”, writes Barrett.

This is not new and was covered in detail nearly two decades ago in the seminal study, “The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life” by Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray. Herrnstein and Murray broke new ground and old taboos, and foretold a story of America’s society in transformation.

Herrnstein and Murray’s research findings are important to today’s key public policy issues, such as:

Immigration:

Herrnstein and Murray wrote, “It should be among the goals of public policy to shift the flow of immigrants away from those admitted under the nepotistic rules (which broadly encourages the reunification of relatives) and toward those admitted under competency rules, already established in immigration law–not to the total exclusion of nepotistic and humanitarian criteria but a shift.”

Food stamps and Medicaid:

“Of all the uncomfortable topics we have explored, a pair of the most uncomfortable ones are that a society with a higher mean IQ is also likely to be a society with fewer social ills and brighter economic prospects, and that the most efficient way to raise the IG of a society is for smarter women to have higher birth rates. If the United States did as much to encourage high-IQ women to have babies as it now does to encourage low-IQ women, it would be rightly described as engaging an aggressive manipulation of fertility. The technically precise description of America’s fertility policy is that it subsidizes birth among poor women, who are also disproportionately at the low end of the intelligence distribution. We urge generally that these policies, represented by the extensive network of cash and services for low-income women who have babies, be ended,” stated Herrnstein and Murray.

Wealth redistribution:

“The question is how to redistribute in ways that increase the chances of people at the bottom of society to take control of their lives, to be engaged meaningfully in their communities, and to find valued places for themselves. Cash supplements need not compete with that goal, whereas the social welfare system that the nation developed in the Twentieth Century most definitely does. We should be looking for ways to replace the latter with the former,” Herrnstein and Murray found.

Perhaps it is time to move away from bigger government to a system where people at the bottom of society take control and responsibility for their own lives? Being poor should not be a permanent condition. However, for politicians and government bureaucrats keeping people poor ensures job security.

---